One of my friends who use a Mac was puzzled as to why keyboard commands sometimes don’t respond during the start-up at his Mac. Being intrigued by this sinister problem I did some research and found out certain interesting facts regarding the use of keyboard commands during the startup process.

In Mac, different modes of start-up can be evoked by a variety of keyboard commands such as, Command-R for OS X Recovery. A special partition is there for booting such a start-up and the Disk Utility and Terminal are run by it. But, OS X has a very interesting characteristic feature by virtue of which the several keyboard commands do not work during the startup process but will start to work when one reaches the login screen. Thus holding down a specific key combination won’t do any good during the startup process unless and until you reach the login screen.

Such a problem can be overcome by using an Apple Wireless Keyboard, plugging it via a USB-to- Lightning charging cable. It will help the OSX to recognise the several keyboard combinations during the startup process. Other Bluetooth keyboards or even non-standard keyboards can come to the user’s aid.

Thus it’s no longer a matter of great concern for the users as to why their keyboard commands seldom don’t work during the startup process at the user’s Mac. A layman may be misunderstand this situation and think that his or her keyboard has some problem or worse, his or her Os or PC may have some problem. Thus a Mac user needs to keep in mind about these facts and thus use the necessary specific keyboard to apply the keyboard combinations during the start-up process.